Tuesday, August 08, 2006

The Casino story. Gone, but definitely not forgotten

As people may recall, back in July we mentioned that the Council had received multiple Freedom of Information requests from the media, councillors and residents about the PriceWaterhouse Cooper report into the Casino proposal for the Dome.

Back then, the Council's response was it was establishing with the 3rd parties mentioned in the report whether they were happy for the information to be published. Interestingly, in response to a question from Cllr Fletcher, the Council made the rather dubious claim that PcW say the "information in the report is their property and confidential to them". This seems rather odd for a report paid for by the Council.

One of our readers, the Plumstead Commoner decided he/she would make an FoI request as well, and they've updated us on it through the Comments section here. Basically, it appears the Plumstead Commoner was told that they should receive a response by around July 17th. However, they're yet to receive anything.

As is pointed out, there's no statutory deadline for a response when the public authority has decided it needs an extension to consider the public interest balance. Perhaps Cllr Fletcher can provide us with an update on this as well because it seems to us like the Council is prevaricating somewhat - possible with the hope that people will forget about the requests? Far be it for us to be cynical, but we wonder whether the answer will only come after the formal Casino decision has been announced by the Government.

2 Comments:

GreenwichWatch, you seem to have read my mind. I am today, in fact, preparing a further assault on this front. I, too, was told to expect a response along the July 17th timescale, but have received nothing, aside from Chris Roberts' less than revealing reply to my written question at Council. One of my biggest gripes is that until a determination is made, and a partial publication of the PWC report takes place, I am essentially gagged from discussing it in public.

In good faith, we supported the Labour Group in their motion to Council last month reaffirming support for the bid - I hope they will now put a bit of effort into acceding to our request for some more openness.